Search Engine Land is a news and information site which specializes in search engine marketing, searching issues and the search engine industry. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how Google, Yahoo and Bing work. 86 percent of its readers are purchase decision makers with at least 1/3 spending more than $500,000 annually on behalf of their clients. Search Engine Land has just published research showing how one of the largest advertisors on social networking sites, Make-My-Baby, was actually a front to drive more traffic to Microsoft’s search engine Bing

How did it work?

Make-My-Baby.com asked its users to install a plug-in to use its features. Only problem? This plug-in locked you into Bing and also it could only be removed by the most tech savvy users. Essentially, it locked you into using Microsoft’s search engine Bing. It earned a commission from Bing for providing traffic.

Guess who spotted this unfair practice by Bing’s affiliate MakeMyBaby? None other than Bing’s arch rival Google who did not waste a minute publicizing it.

Bing has now ended its association with MakeMyBaby. MakeMyBaby has also disappeared from the internet.